Exhibitions
Born from the century-spanning experience of ITOKI, the Japanese brand brings its first international collection of workplace furniture to Milan
A Matter of Salone, Communication Campaign in the city, ©Alessandro Russotti, Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026
A guide to the week’s events, featuring newsstands, archives, urban itineraries and fifteen Art Week and Design Week exhibitions
Every year, Milan seems to undergo a transformation in the days leading up to the opening of the Salone del Mobile, Milano. There is already a buzz in the air, growing day by day. The opening of Art Week coincides with previews and the first installations of Design Week: a time when art and design naturally share the stage. It is at this juncture that the city best expresses its cultural vocation, that rare ability on the international scene to bring together different disciplines, audiences and languages within the same urban fabric. The Salone del Mobile.Milano contributes to this urban dimension with a series of initiatives that extend beyond the pavilions of the exhibition to take over squares, newsstands and archives. Alongside these, museums, foundations and institutions offer a programme of exhibitions and events that further enriches the week. What follows is a guide to the unmissable events: the initiatives organised by the Salone and a selection of cultural offerings across the city.
A Matter of Salone, Communication Campaign in the city, ©Alessandro Russotti, Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026
Salone in the City: widespread events
This year, three events will again be taking the story of design beyond the confines of the Rho pavilions – a publishing stand in Piazza della Scala, an urban itinerary taking in five Milanese buildings, and an extraordinary opening of the city’s design and architecture archives. Three different ways of experiencing Milan, through publishing, public space and memory.
Design Kiosk
The Design Kiosk will be back in Piazza della Scala as a cultural hub and active stopping place. An open-air publishing space in which design is narrated through books, magazines and conversations, building a programme of events throughout the week. Curated by Reading Room, the programme will unfold in a series of meetings interweaving architecture, publishing and visual research, at 6.30pm from 17th to 26th April.
The cycle will open with a dialogue with Bianca Felicori, who will introduce the Architecture of Freedom project and its urban itinerary. This will be followed by conversations on independent publishing with protagonists such as Cose Journal and NONSENSE, which explore new languages and narrative formats. The story will continue with international visions of living: Ark Journal will investigate the relationship between space, sensitivity and narration, Holiday Interiors and Gardens will build domestic imagery through eras and geographies. C Magazine, will use the chair as an editorial device. Lastly, Never Too Small, where quality, ingenuity and sustainability redefine home design.
Design Kiosk, Piazza della Scala, Salone del Mobile 2025, ©Alessandro Russotti
Architecture of Freedom
In Piazza Sant'Eustorgio, one of the most visited places in the city during the Salone, a newsstand entirely dedicated to the event will provide the starting point for an urban itinerary conceived by Bianca Felicori, founder of Forgotten Architecture. The project, devised specifically for the Salone, is an invitation to make one’s way through Milan by touching five emblematic buildings, transformed into different stages of a contemporary story.
The itinerary takes in Arrigo Arrighetti's Sormani Library, Marco Zanuso's Collegio di Milano, Bruno Morassutti and Angelo Mangiarotti's Three-Cylinder House, Arrigo Arrighetti's Church of San Giovanni Bono, and Luigi Moretti's Corso Italia building. All key projects in the history of Milanese design, all different with regard to scale, language and context. At each stage, light textile installations created by K-WAY are grafted onto the architecture as temporary presences, illustrating mass and lightness, permanence and ephemerality. The upshot is a city that is not limited to being observed but is traversed and reinterpreted, where architecture becomes an experience and a narrative device.
Salone del Mobile.Milano 2026, Forgotten Architecture, Biblioteca Sormani, © Louis De Belle
Common Archive – the White Night of Design
On April 24th, for one evening only , the historical archives of design and architecture in Milan will open to the public in a single programme featuring over 50 guided tours and free meetings. Common Archive is a Salone del Mobile.Milano Observatory initiative, under the patronage of the Lombard Region and the Municipality of Milan, in collaboration with the Politecnico di Milano School of Design. The programme, from 6.30pm to 11pm, will take in the main nodes of the city's archive system: from the Cittadella degli Archivi to CASVA, the Triennale, the Polytechnic, the studio-houses and foundations of the protagonists of the twentieth century – Achille Castiglioni, Franco Albini, Vico Magistretti, Gae Aulenti, Gio Ponti, Giancarlo Iliprandi, Bruno Danese and Jacqueline Vodoz – right up to the Bertarelli Print Collection at the Sforza Castle. The Fabbrica del Vapore will be holding an extraordinary evening opening of the exhibition INTERDEPENDENCE: past, present, future. Milan will not be laying itself open as an attraction, but as a living memory: a legacy of drawings, models, photographs and notes in which design has been conserved and is allowing itself to be explored once more.
Franco Albini Foundation, Common Archive – Salone del Mobile.Milano
City exhibitions and events
Over this shared Art Week and Design Week space, Milan’s museums, foundations and institutions will have a huge amount on offer. Exhibitions inaugurated over the previous few days will remain open and be interspersed with new launches, performances and fairs, in an overlap that makes for a broad, crosscutting cultural offering. Here are fifteen appointments to mark in your diary.
Romane de Watteville. I'll miss you when I scroll away
Swiss Institute
The Swiss artist’s first institutional solo exhibition in Italy. An environmental installation featuring painted walls, created specifically for the Milanese venues, which transports us to the period following the end of a party, evoking a sense of excess that gives way to entropy.
When: April 15 – July 4; 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
Marco Fusinato: THE ONLY TRUE ANARCHY IS THAT OF POWER
PAC Contemporary Art Pavilion
The first one-man European exhibition of work by the Australian artist, curated by Diego Sileo. Featuring installations, photography, performance and music, the exhibition marks Fusinato’s return to Italy following the 2022 Venice Biennale. A body of work in which visual art and sound research combine.
When: March 31–June 7; 10:00 a.m.–7:30 p.m.
